POLITICAL REFORM
Throughout this volume we have assumed that much of our ethical
maladjustment in social affairs arises from the fact that we are acting
upon a code of ethics adapted to individual relationships, but not to
the larger social relationships to which it is bunglingly applied. In
addition, however, to the consequent strain and difficulty, there is
often an honest lack of perception as to what the situation demands.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in our political life as it manifests
itself in certain quarters of every great city. It is most difficult to
hold to our political democracy and to make it in any sense a social
expression and not a mere governmental contrivance, unless we take pains
to keep on common ground in our human experiences. Otherwise there is
in various parts of the community an inevitable difference of ethical
standards which becomes responsible for much misunderstanding.
It is difficult both to interpret sympathetically the motives and ideals
of those who have acquired rules of conduct in experience widely
different from our own, and also to take enough care in guarding the
gains already made, and in valuing highly enough the imperfect good so
painfully acquired and, at the best, so mixed with evil. This wide
difference in daily experience exhibits itself in two distinct attitudes
toward politics. The well-to-do men of the community think of politics
as something off by itself; they may conscientiously recognize political
duty as part of good citizenship, but political effort is not the
expression of their moral or social life. As a result of this
detachment, "reform movements," started by business men and the better
element, are almost wholly occupied in the correction of political
machinery and with a concern for the better method of administration,
rather than with the ultimate purpose of securing the welfare of the
people. They fix their attention so exclusively on methods that they
fail to consider the final aims of city government. This accounts for
the growing tendency to put more and more responsibility upon executive
officers and appointed commissions at the expense of curtailing the
power of the direct representatives of the voters. Reform movements tend
to become negative and to lose their educational value for the mass of
the people. The reformers take the rôle of the opposition. They give
themselves largely to criticisms of the present state of affairs, to
writing and talking of what the future must be and of certain results
which should be obtained. In trying to better matters, however, they
have in mind only political achievements which they detach in a curious
way from the rest of life, and they speak and write of the purification
of politics as of a thing set apart from daily life.
On the other hand, the real leaders of the people are part of the entire
life of the community which they control, and so far as they are
representative at all, are giving a social expression to democracy. They
are often politically corrupt, but in spite of this they are proceeding
upon a sounder theory. Although they would be totally unable to give it
abstract expression, they are really acting upon a formulation made by a
shrewd English observer; namely, that, "after the enfranchisement of the
masses, social ideals enter into political programmes, and they enter
not as something which at best can be indirectly promoted by government,
but as something which it is the chief business of government to advance
directly."
Men living near to the masses of voters, and knowing them intimately,
recognize this and act upon it; they minister directly to life and to
social needs. They realize that the people as a whole are clamoring for
social results, and they hold their power because they respond to that
demand. They are corrupt and often do their work badly; but they at
least avoid the mistake of a certain type of business men who are
frightened by democracy, and have lost their faith in the people. The
two standards are similar to those seen at a popular exhibition of
pictures where the cultivated people care most for the technique of a
given painting, the moving mass for a subject that shall be domestic and
human.
This difference may be illustrated by the writer's experience in a
certain ward of Chicago, during three campaigns, when efforts were made
to dislodge an alderman who had represented the ward for many years. In
this ward there are gathered together fifty thousand people,
representing a score of nationalities; the newly emigrated Latin,
Teuton, Celt, Greek, and Slav who live there have little in common save
the basic experiences which come to men in all countries and under all
conditions. In order to make fifty thousand people, so heterogeneous in
nationality, religion, and customs, agree upon any demand, it must be
founded upon universal experiences which are perforce individual and not
social.
An instinctive recognition of this on the part of the alderman makes it
possible to understand the individualistic basis of his political
success, but it remains extremely difficult to ascertain the reasons for
the extreme leniency of judgment concerning the political corruption of
which he is constantly guilty.
This leniency is only to be explained on the ground that his
constituents greatly admire individual virtues, and that they are at the
same time unable to perceive social outrages which the alderman may be
committing. They thus free the alderman from blame because his
corruption is social, and they honestly admire him as a great man and
hero, because his individual acts are on the whole kindly and generous.
In certain stages of moral evolution, a man is incapable of action
unless the results will benefit himself or some one of his
acquaintances, and it is a long step in moral progress to set the good
of the many before the interest of the few, and to be concerned for the
welfare of a community without hope of an individual return. How far the
selfish politician befools his constituents into believing that their
interests are identical with his own; how far he presumes upon their
inability to distinguish between the individual and social virtues, an
inability which he himself shares with them; and how far he dazzles them
by the sense of his greatness, and a conviction that they participate
therein, it is difficult to determine.
Morality certainly develops far earlier in the form of moral fact than
in the form of moral ideas, and it is obvious that ideas only operate
upon the popular mind through will and character, and must be dramatized
before they reach the mass of men, even as the biography of the saints
have been after all "the main guide to the stumbling feet of thousands
of Christians to whom the Credo has been but mysterious words."
Ethics as well as political opinions may be discussed and disseminated
among the sophisticated by lectures and printed pages, but to the common
people they can only come through example--through a personality which
seizes the popular imagination. The advantage of an unsophisticated
neighborhood is, that the inhabitants do not keep their ideas as
treasures--they are untouched by the notion of accumulating them, as
they might knowledge or money, and they frankly act upon those they
have. The personal example promptly rouses to emulation. In a
neighborhood where political standards are plastic and undeveloped, and
where there has been little previous experience in self-government, the
office-holder himself sets the standard, and the ideas that cluster
around him exercise a specific and permanent influence upon the
political morality of his constituents.
Nothing is more certain than that the quality which a heterogeneous
population, living in one of the less sophisticated wards, most admires
is the quality of simple goodness; that the man who attracts them is the
one whom they believe to be a good man. We all know that children long
"to be good" with an intensity which they give to no other ambition. We
can all remember that the earliest strivings of our childhood were in
this direction, and that we venerated grown people because they had
attained perfection.
Primitive people, such as the South Italian peasants, are still in this
stage. They want to be good, and deep down in their hearts they admire
nothing so much as the good man. Abstract virtues are too difficult for
their untrained minds to apprehend, and many of them are still simple
enough to believe that power and wealth come only to good people.
The successful candidate, then, must be a good man according to the
morality of his constituents. He must not attempt to hold up too high a
standard, nor must he attempt to reform or change their standards. His
safety lies in doing on a large scale the good deeds which his
constituents are able to do only on a small scale. If he believes what
they believe and does what they are all cherishing a secret ambition to
do, he will dazzle them by his success and win their confidence. There
is a certain wisdom in this course. There is a common sense in the mass
of men which cannot be neglected with impunity, just as there is sure to
be an eccentricity in the differing and reforming individual which it is
perhaps well to challenge.
The constant kindness of the poor to each other was pointed out in a
previous chapter, and that they unfailingly respond to the need and
distresses of their poorer neighbors even when in danger of bankruptcy
themselves. The kindness which a poor man shows his distressed neighbor
is doubtless heightened by the consciousness that he himself may be in
distress next week; he therefore stands by his friend when he gets too
drunk to take care of himself, when he loses his wife or child, when he
is evicted for non-payment of rent, when he is arrested for a petty
crime. It seems to such a man entirely fitting that his alderman should
do the same thing on a larger scale--that he should help a constituent
out of trouble, merely because he is in trouble, irrespective of the
justice involved.
The alderman therefore bails out his constituents when they are
arrested, or says a good word to the police justice when they appear
before him for trial, uses his pull with the magistrate when they are
likely to be fined for a civil misdemeanor, or sees what he can do to
"fix up matters" with the state's attorney when the charge is really a
serious one, and in doing this he follows the ethics held and practised
by his constituents. All this conveys the impression to the
simple-minded that law is not enforced, if the lawbreaker have a
powerful friend. One may instance the alderman's action in standing by
an Italian padrone of the ward when he was indicted for violating the
civil service regulations. The commissioners had sent out notices to
certain Italian day-laborers who were upon the eligible list that they
were to report for work at a given day and hour. One of the padrones
intercepted these notifications and sold them to the men for five
dollars apiece, making also the usual bargain for a share of their
wages. The padrone's entire arrangement followed the custom which had
prevailed for years before the establishment of civil service laws. Ten
of the laborers swore out warrants against the padrone, who was
convicted and fined seventy-five dollars. This sum was promptly paid by
the alderman, and the padrone, assured that he would be protected from
any further trouble, returned uninjured to the colony. The simple
Italians were much bewildered by this show of a power stronger than that
of the civil service, which they had trusted as they did the one in
Italy. The first violation of its authority was made, and various
sinister acts have followed, until no Italian who is digging a sewer or
sweeping a street for the city feels quite secure in holding his job
unless he is backed by the friendship of the alderman. According to the
civil service law, a laborer has no right to a trial; many are
discharged by the foreman, and find that they can be reinstated only
upon the aldermanic recommendation. He thus practically holds his old
power over the laborers working for the city. The popular mind is
convinced that an honest administration of civil service is impossible,
and that it is but one more instrument in the hands of the powerful.
It will be difficult to establish genuine civil service among these men,
who learn only by experience, since their experiences have been of such
a nature that their unanimous vote would certainly be that "civil
service" is "no good."
As many of his constituents in this case are impressed with the fact
that the aldermanic power is superior to that of government, so
instances of actual lawbreaking might easily be cited. A young man may
enter a saloon long after midnight, the legal closing hour, and seat
himself at a gambling table, perfectly secure from interruption or
arrest, because the place belongs to an alderman; but in order to secure
this immunity the policeman on the beat must pretend not to see into the
windows each time that he passes, and he knows, and the young man knows
that he knows, that nothing would embarrass "Headquarters" more than to
have an arrest made on those premises. A certain contempt for the whole
machinery of law and order is thus easily fostered.
Because of simple friendliness the alderman is expected to pay rent for
the hard-pressed tenant when no rent is forthcoming, to find "jobs" when
work is hard to get, to procure and divide among his constituents all
the places which he can seize from the city hall. The alderman of the
ward we are considering at one time could make the proud boast that he
had twenty-six hundred people in his ward upon the public pay-roll.
This, of course, included day laborers, but each one felt under
distinct obligations to him for getting a position. When we reflect that
this is one-third of the entire vote of the ward, we realize that it is
very important to vote for the right man, since there is, at the least,
one chance out of three for securing work.
If we recollect further that the franchise-seeking companies pay
respectful heed to the applicants backed by the alderman, the question
of voting for the successful man becomes as much an industrial one as a
political one. An Italian laborer wants a "job" more than anything else,
and quite simply votes for the man who promises him one. It is not so
different from his relation to the padrone, and, indeed, the two
strengthen each other.
The alderman may himself be quite sincere in his acts of kindness, for
an office seeker may begin with the simple desire to alleviate
suffering, and this may gradually change into the desire to put his
constituents under obligations to him; but the action of such an
individual becomes a demoralizing element in the community when kindly
impulse is made a cloak for the satisfaction of personal ambition, and
when the plastic morals of his constituents gradually conform to his own
undeveloped standards.
The alderman gives presents at weddings and christenings. He seizes
these days of family festivities for making friends. It is easiest to
reach them in the holiday mood of expansive good-will, but on their side
it seems natural and kindly that he should do it. The alderman procures
passes from the railroads when his constituents wish to visit friends or
attend the funerals of distant relatives; he buys tickets galore for
benefit entertainments given for a widow or a consumptive in peculiar
distress; he contributes to prizes which are awarded to the handsomest
lady or the most popular man. At a church bazaar, for instance, the
alderman finds the stage all set for his dramatic performance. When
others are spending pennies, he is spending dollars. When anxious
relatives are canvassing to secure votes for the two most beautiful
children who are being voted upon, he recklessly buys votes from both
sides, and laughingly declines to say which one he likes best, buying
off the young lady who is persistently determined to find out, with five
dollars for the flower bazaar, the posies, of course, to be sent to the
sick of the parish. The moral atmosphere of a bazaar suits him exactly.
He murmurs many times, "Never mind, the money all goes to the poor; it
is all straight enough if the church gets it, the poor won't ask too
many questions." The oftener he can put such sentiments into the minds
of his constituents, the better he is pleased. Nothing so rapidly
prepares them to take his view of money getting and money spending. We
see again the process disregarded, because the end itself is considered
so praiseworthy.
There is something archaic in a community of simple people in their
attitude toward death and burial. There is nothing so easy to collect
money for as a funeral, and one involuntarily remembers that the early
religious tithes were paid to ward off death and ghosts. At times one
encounters almost the Greek feeling in regard to burial. If the alderman
seizes upon times of festivities for expressions of his good-will, much
more does he seize upon periods of sorrow. At a funeral he has the
double advantage of ministering to a genuine craving for comfort and
solace, and at the same time of assisting a bereaved constituent to
express that curious feeling of remorse, which is ever an accompaniment
of quick sorrow, that desire to "make up" for past delinquencies, to
show the world how much he loved the person who has just died, which is
as natural as it is universal.
In addition to this, there is, among the poor, who have few social
occasions, a great desire for a well-arranged funeral, the grade of
which almost determines their social standing in the neighborhood. The
alderman saves the very poorest of his constituents from that awful
horror of burial by the county; he provides carriages for the poor, who
otherwise could not have them. It may be too much to say that all the
relatives and friends who ride in the carriages provided by the
alderman's bounty vote for him, but they are certainly influenced by his
kindness, and talk of his virtues during the long hours of the ride back
and forth from the suburban cemetery. A man who would ask at such a time
where all the money thus spent comes from would be considered sinister.
The tendency to speak lightly of the faults of the dead and to judge
them gently is transferred to the living, and many a man at such a time
has formulated a lenient judgment of political corruption, and has heard
kindly speeches which he has remembered on election day. "Ah, well, he
has a big Irish heart. He is good to the widow and the fatherless." "He
knows the poor better than the big guns who are always talking about
civil service and reform."
Indeed, what headway can the notion of civic purity, of honesty of
administration make against this big manifestation of human
friendliness, this stalking survival of village kindness? The notions of
the civic reformer are negative and impotent before it. Such an alderman
will keep a standing account with an undertaker, and telephone every
week, and sometimes more than once, the kind of funeral he wishes
provided for a bereaved constituent, until the sum may roll up into
"hundreds a year." He understands what the people want, and ministers
just as truly to a great human need as the musician or the artist. An
attempt to substitute what we might call a later standard was made at
one time when a delicate little child was deserted in the Hull-House
nursery. An investigation showed that it had been born ten days
previously in the Cook County hospital, but no trace could be found of
the unfortunate mother. The little child lived for several weeks, and
then, in spite of every care, died. It was decided to have it buried by
the county authorities, and the wagon was to arrive at eleven o'clock;
about nine o'clock in the morning the rumor of this awful deed reached
the neighbors. A half dozen of them came, in a very excited state of
mind, to protest. They took up a collection out of their poverty with
which to defray a funeral. The residents of Hull-House were then
comparatively new in the neighborhood and did not realize that they were
really shocking a genuine moral sentiment of the community. In their
crudeness they instanced the care and tenderness which had been expended
upon the little creature while it was alive; that it had had every
attention from a skilled physician and a trained nurse, and even
intimated that the excited members of the group had not taken part in
this, and that it now lay with the nursery to decide that it should be
buried as it had been born, at the county's expense. It is doubtful if
Hull-House has ever done anything which injured it so deeply in the
minds of some of its neighbors. It was only forgiven by the most
indulgent on the ground that the residents were spinsters, and could not
know a mother's heart. No one born and reared in the community could
possibly have made a mistake like that. No one who had studied the
ethical standards with any care could have bungled so completely.
We are constantly underestimating the amount of sentiment among simple
people. The songs which are most popular among them are those of a
reminiscent old age, in which the ripened soul calmly recounts and
regrets the sins of his youth, songs in which the wayward daughter is
forgiven by her loving parents, in which the lovers are magnanimous and
faithful through all vicissitudes. The tendency is to condone and
forgive, and not hold too rigidly to a standard. In the theatres it is
the magnanimous man, the kindly reckless villain who is always
applauded. So shrewd an observer as Samuel Johnson once remarked that it
was surprising to find how much more kindness than justice society
contained.
On the same basis the alderman manages several saloons, one down town
within easy access of the city hall, where he can catch the more
important of his friends. Here again he has seized upon an old tradition
and primitive custom, the good fellowship which has long been best
expressed when men drink together. The saloons offer a common meeting
ground, with stimulus enough to free the wits and tongues of the men who
meet there.
He distributes each Christmas many tons of turkeys not only to voters,
but to families who are represented by no vote. By a judicious
management some families get three or four turkeys apiece; but what of
that, the alderman has none of the nagging rules of the charitable
societies, nor does he declare that because a man wants two turkeys for
Christmas, he is a scoundrel who shall never be allowed to eat turkey
again. As he does not distribute his Christmas favors from any hardly
acquired philanthropic motive, there is no disposition to apply the
carefully evolved rules of the charitable societies to his
beneficiaries. Of course, there are those who suspect that the
benevolence rests upon self-seeking motives, and feel themselves quite
freed from any sense of gratitude; others go further and glory in the
fact that they can thus "soak the alderman." An example of this is the
young man who fills his pockets with a handful of cigars, giving a sly
wink at the others. But this freedom from any sense of obligation is
often the first step downward to the position where he is willing to
sell his vote to both parties, and then scratch his ticket as he
pleases. The writer recalls a conversation with a man in which he
complained quite openly, and with no sense of shame, that his vote had
"sold for only two dollars this year," and that he was "awfully
disappointed." The writer happened to know that his income during the
nine months previous had been but twenty-eight dollars, and that he was
in debt thirty-two dollars, and she could well imagine the eagerness
with which he had counted upon this source of revenue. After some years
the selling of votes becomes a commonplace, and but little attempt is
made upon the part of the buyer or seller to conceal the fact, if the
transaction runs smoothly.
A certain lodging-house keeper at one time sold the votes of his entire
house to a political party and was "well paid for it too"; but being of
a grasping turn, he also sold the house for the same election to the
rival party. Such an outrage could not be borne. The man was treated to
a modern version of tar and feathers, and as a result of being held
under a street hydrant in November, contracted pneumonia which resulted
in his death. No official investigation took place, since the doctor's
certificate of pneumonia was sufficient for legal burial, and public
sentiment sustained the action. In various conversations which the
writer had concerning the entire transaction, she discovered great
indignation concerning his duplicity and treachery, but none whatever
for his original offence of selling out the votes of his house.
A club will be started for the express purpose of gaining a reputation
for political power which may later be sold out. The president and
executive committee of such a club, who will naturally receive the
funds, promise to divide with "the boys" who swell the size of the
membership. A reform movement is at first filled with recruits who are
active and loud in their assertions of the number of votes they can
"deliver." The reformers are delighted with this display of zeal, and
only gradually find out that many of the recruits are there for the
express purpose of being bought by the other side; that they are most
active in order to seem valuable, and thus raise the price of their
allegiance when they are ready to sell. Reformers seeing them drop away
one by one, talk of desertion from the ranks of reform, and of the power
of money over well-meaning men, who are too weak to withstand
temptation; but in reality the men are not deserters because they have
never actually been enrolled in the ranks. The money they take is
neither a bribe nor the price of their loyalty, it is simply the
consummation of a long-cherished plan and a well-earned reward. They
came into the new movement for the purpose of being bought out of it,
and have successfully accomplished that purpose.
Hull-House assisted in carrying on two unsuccessful campaigns against
the same alderman. In the two years following the end of the first one,
nearly every man who had been prominent in it had received an office
from the reëlected alderman. A printer had been appointed to a clerkship
in the city hall; a driver received a large salary for services in the
police barns; the candidate himself, a bricklayer, held a position in
the city construction department. At the beginning of the next
campaign, the greatest difficulty was experienced in finding a
candidate, and each one proposed, demanded time to consider the
proposition. During this period he invariably became the recipient of
the alderman's bounty. The first one, who was foreman of a large
factory, was reported to have been bought off by the promise that the
city institutions would use the product of his firm. The second one, a
keeper of a grocery and family saloon, with large popularity, was
promised the aldermanic nomination on the regular ticket at the
expiration of the term of office held by the alderman's colleague, and
it may be well to state in passing that he was thus nominated and
successfully elected. The third proposed candidate received a place for
his son in the office of the city attorney.
Not only are offices in his gift, but all smaller favors as well. Any
requests to the council, or special licenses, must be presented by the
alderman of the ward in which the person desiring the favor resides.
There is thus constant opportunity for the alderman to put his
constituents under obligations to him, to make it difficult for a
constituent to withstand him, or for one with large interests to enter
into political action at all. From the Italian pedler who wants a
license to peddle fruit in the street, to the large manufacturing
company who desires to tunnel an alley for the sake of conveying pipes
from one building to another, everybody is under obligations to his
alderman, and is constantly made to feel it. In short, these very
regulations for presenting requests to the council have been made, by
the aldermen themselves, for the express purpose of increasing the
dependence of their constituents, and thereby augmenting aldermanic
power and prestige.
The alderman has also a very singular hold upon the property owners of
his ward. The paving, both of the streets and sidewalks throughout his
district, is disgraceful; and in the election speeches the reform side
holds him responsible for this condition, and promises better paving
under another régime. But the paving could not be made better without a
special assessment upon the property owners of the vicinity, and paying
more taxes is exactly what his constituents do not want to do. In
reality, "getting them off," or at the worst postponing the time of the
improvement, is one of the genuine favors which he performs. A movement
to have the paving done from a general fund would doubtless be opposed
by the property owners in other parts of the city who have already paid
for the asphalt bordering their own possessions, but they have no
conception of the struggle and possible bankruptcy which repaving may
mean to the small property owner, nor how his chief concern may be to
elect an alderman who cares more for the feelings and pocket-books of
his constituents than he does for the repute and cleanliness of his
city.
The alderman exhibited great wisdom in procuring from certain of his
down-town friends the sum of three thousand dollars with which to
uniform and equip a boys' temperance brigade which had been formed in
one of the ward churches a few months before his campaign. Is it strange
that the good leader, whose heart was filled with innocent pride as he
looked upon these promising young scions of virtue, should decline to
enter into a reform campaign? Of what use to suggest that uniforms and
bayonets for the purpose of promoting temperance, bought with money
contributed by a man who was proprietor of a saloon and a gambling
house, might perhaps confuse the ethics of the young soldiers? Why take
the pains to urge that it was vain to lecture and march abstract virtues
into them, so long as the "champion boodler" of the town was the man
whom the boys recognized as a loyal and kindhearted friend, the
public-spirited citizen, whom their fathers enthusiastically voted for,
and their mothers called "the friend of the poor." As long as the actual
and tangible success is thus embodied, marching whether in kindergartens
or brigades, talking whether in clubs or classes, does little to change
the code of ethics.
The question of where does the money come from which is spent so
successfully, does of course occur to many minds. The more primitive
people accept the truthful statement of its sources without any shock to
their moral sense. To their simple minds he gets it "from the rich" and,
so long as he again gives it out to the poor as a true Robin Hood, with
open hand, they have no objections to offer. Their ethics are quite
honestly those of the merry-making foresters. The next less primitive
people of the vicinage are quite willing to admit that he leads the
"gang" in the city council, and sells out the city franchises; that he
makes deals with the franchise-seeking companies; that he guarantees to
steer dubious measures through the council, for which he demands liberal
pay; that he is, in short, a successful "boodler." When, however, there
is intellect enough to get this point of view, there is also enough to
make the contention that this is universally done, that all the
aldermen do it more or less successfully, but that the alderman of this
particular ward is unique in being so generous; that such a state of
affairs is to be deplored, of course; but that that is the way business
is run, and we are fortunate when a kind-hearted man who is close to the
people gets a large share of the spoils; that he serves franchised
companies who employ men in the building and construction of their
enterprises, and that they are bound in return to give work to his
constituents. It is again the justification of stealing from the rich to
give to the poor. Even when they are intelligent enough to complete the
circle, and to see that the money comes, not from the pockets of the
companies' agents, but from the street-car fares of people like
themselves, it almost seems as if they would rather pay two cents more
each time they ride than to give up the consciousness that they have a
big, warm-hearted friend at court who will stand by them in an
emergency. The sense of just dealing comes apparently much later than
the desire for protection and indulgence. On the whole, the gifts and
favors are taken quite simply as an evidence of genuine loving-kindness.
The alderman is really elected because he is a good friend and neighbor.
He is corrupt, of course, but he is not elected because he is corrupt,
but rather in spite of it. His standard suits his constituents. He
exemplifies and exaggerates the popular type of a good man. He has
attained what his constituents secretly long for.
At one end of the ward there is a street of good houses, familiarly
called "Con Row." The term is perhaps quite unjustly used, but it is
nevertheless universally applied, because many of these houses are
occupied by professional office holders. This row is supposed to form a
happy hunting-ground of the successful politician, where he can live in
prosperity, and still maintain his vote and influence in the ward. It
would be difficult to justly estimate the influence which this group of
successful, prominent men, including the alderman who lives there, have
had upon the ideals of the youth in the vicinity. The path which leads
to riches and success, to civic prominence and honor, is the path of
political corruption. We might compare this to the path laid out by
Benjamin Franklin, who also secured all of these things, but told young
men that they could be obtained only by strenuous effort and frugal
living, by the cultivation of the mind, and the holding fast to
righteousness; or, again, we might compare it to the ideals which were
held up to the American youth fifty years ago, lower, to be sure, than
the revolutionary ideal, but still fine and aspiring toward honorable
dealing and careful living. They were told that the career of the
self-made man was open to every American boy, if he worked hard and
saved his money, improved his mind, and followed a steady ambition. The
writer remembers that when she was ten years old, the village
schoolmaster told his little flock, without any mitigating clauses,
that Jay Gould had laid the foundation of his colossal fortune by always
saving bits of string, and that, as a result, every child in the village
assiduously collected party-colored balls of twine. A bright Chicago boy
might well draw the inference that the path of the corrupt politician
not only leads to civic honors, but to the glories of benevolence and
philanthropy. This lowering of standards, this setting of an ideal, is
perhaps the worst of the situation, for, as we said in the first
chapter, we determine ideals by our daily actions and decisions not only
for ourselves, but largely for each other.
We are all involved in this political corruption, and as members of the
community stand indicted. This is the penalty of a democracy,--that we
are bound to move forward or retrograde together. None of us can stand
aside; our feet are mired in the same soil, and our lungs breathe the
same air.
That the alderman has much to do with setting the standard of life and
desirable prosperity may be illustrated by the following incident:
During one of the campaigns a clever cartoonist drew a poster
representing the successful alderman in portraiture drinking champagne
at a table loaded with pretentious dishes and surrounded by other
revellers. In contradistinction was his opponent, a bricklayer, who sat
upon a half-finished wall, eating a meagre dinner from a workingman's
dinner-pail, and the passer-by was asked which type of representative he
preferred, the presumption being that at least in a workingman's
district the bricklayer would come out ahead. To the chagrin of the
reformers, however, it was gradually discovered that, in the popular
mind, a man who laid bricks and wore overalls was not nearly so
desirable for an alderman as the man who drank champagne and wore a
diamond in his shirt front. The district wished its representative "to
stand up with the best of them," and certainly some of the constituents
would have been ashamed to have been represented by a bricklayer. It is
part of that general desire to appear well, the optimistic and
thoroughly American belief, that even if a man is working with his hands
to-day, he and his children will quite likely be in a better position in
the swift coming to-morrow, and there is no need of being too closely
associated with common working people. There is an honest absence of
class consciousness, and a naïve belief that the kind of occupation
quite largely determines social position. This is doubtless exaggerated
in a neighborhood of foreign people by the fact that as each nationality
becomes more adapted to American conditions, the scale of its occupation
rises. Fifty years ago in America "a Dutchman" was used as a term of
reproach, meaning a man whose language was not understood, and who
performed menial tasks, digging sewers and building railroad
embankments. Later the Irish did the same work in the community, but as
quickly as possible handed it on to the Italians, to whom the name
"dago" is said to cling as a result of the digging which the Irishman
resigned to him. The Italian himself is at last waking up to this fact.
In a political speech recently made by an Italian padrone, he bitterly
reproached the alderman for giving the-four-dollars-a-day "jobs" of
sitting in an office to Irishmen and the-dollar-and-a-half-a-day "jobs"
of sweeping the streets to the Italians. This general struggle to rise
in life, to be at least politically represented by one of the best, as
to occupation and social status, has also its negative side. We must
remember that the imitative impulse plays an important part in life, and
that the loss of social estimation, keenly felt by all of us, is perhaps
most dreaded by the humblest, among whom freedom of individual conduct,
the power to give only just weight to the opinion of neighbors, is but
feebly developed. A form of constraint, gentle, but powerful, is
afforded by the simple desire to do what others do, in order to share
with them the approval of the community. Of course, the larger the
number of people among whom an habitual mode of conduct obtains, the
greater the constraint it puts upon the individual will. Thus it is that
the political corruption of the city presses most heavily where it can
be least resisted, and is most likely to be imitated.
According to the same law, the positive evils of corrupt government are
bound to fall heaviest upon the poorest and least capable. When the
water of Chicago is foul, the prosperous buy water bottled at distant
springs; the poor have no alternative but the typhoid fever which comes
from using the city's supply. When the garbage contracts are not
enforced, the well-to-do pay for private service; the poor suffer the
discomfort and illness which are inevitable from a foul atmosphere. The
prosperous business man has a certain choice as to whether he will treat
with the "boss" politician or preserve his independence on a smaller
income; but to an Italian day laborer it is a choice between obeying the
commands of a political "boss" or practical starvation. Again, a more
intelligent man may philosophize a little upon the present state of
corruption, and reflect that it is but a phase of our commercialism,
from which we are bound to emerge; at any rate, he may give himself the
solace of literature and ideals in other directions, but the more
ignorant man who lives only in the narrow present has no such resource;
slowly the conviction enters his mind that politics is a matter of
favors and positions, that self-government means pleasing the "boss" and
standing in with the "gang." This slowly acquired knowledge he hands on
to his family. During the month of February his boy may come home from
school with rather incoherent tales about Washington and Lincoln, and
the father may for the moment be fired to tell of Garibaldi, but such
talk is only periodic, and the long year round the fortunes of the
entire family, down to the opportunity to earn food and shelter, depend
upon the "boss."
In a certain measure also, the opportunities for pleasure and recreation
depend upon him. To use a former illustration, if a man happens to have
a taste for gambling, if the slot machine affords him diversion, he goes
to those houses which are protected by political influence. If he and
his friends like to drop into a saloon after midnight, or even want to
hear a little music while they drink together early in the evening, he
is breaking the law when he indulges in either of them, and can only be
exempt from arrest or fine because the great political machine is
friendly to him and expects his allegiance in return.
During the campaign, when it was found hard to secure enough local
speakers of the moral tone which was desired, orators were imported from
other parts of the town, from the so-called "better element." Suddenly
it was rumored on all sides that, while the money and speakers for the
reform candidate were coming from the swells, the money which was
backing the corrupt alderman also came from a swell source; that the
president of a street-car combination, for whom he performed constant
offices in the city council, was ready to back him to the extent of
fifty thousand dollars; that this president, too, was a good man, and
sat in high places; that he had recently given a large sum of money to
an educational institution and was therefore as philanthropic, not to
say good and upright, as any man in town; that the corrupt alderman had
the sanction of the highest authorities, and that the lecturers who were
talking against corruption, and the selling and buying of franchises,
were only the cranks, and not the solid business men who had developed
and built up Chicago.
All parts of the community are bound together in ethical development. If
the so-called more enlightened members accept corporate gifts from the
man who buys up the council, and the so-called less enlightened members
accept individual gifts from the man who sells out the council, we
surely must take our punishment together. There is the difference, of
course, that in the first case we act collectively, and in the second
case individually; but is the punishment which follows the first any
lighter or less far-reaching in its consequences than the more obvious
one which follows the second?
Have our morals been so captured by commercialism, to use Mr. Chapman's
generalization, that we do not see a moral dereliction when business or
educational interests are served thereby, although we are still shocked
when the saloon interest is thus served?
The street-car company which declares that it is impossible to do
business without managing the city council, is on exactly the same moral
level with the man who cannot retain political power unless he has a
saloon, a large acquaintance with the semi-criminal class, and
questionable money with which to debauch his constituents. Both sets of
men assume that the only appeal possible is along the line of
self-interest. They frankly acknowledge money getting as their own
motive power, and they believe in the cupidity of all the men whom they
encounter. No attempt in either case is made to put forward the claims
of the public, or to find a moral basis for action. As the corrupt
politician assumes that public morality is impossible, so many business
men become convinced that to pay tribute to the corrupt aldermen is on
the whole cheaper than to have taxes too high; that it is better to pay
exorbitant rates for franchises, than to be made unwilling partners in
transportation experiments. Such men come to regard political reformers
as a sort of monomaniac, who are not reasonable enough to see the
necessity of the present arrangement which has slowly been evolved and
developed, and upon which business is safely conducted. A reformer who
really knew the people and their great human needs, who believed that
it was the business of government to serve them, and who further
recognized the educative power of a sense of responsibility, would
possess a clew by which he might analyze the situation. He would find
out what needs, which the alderman supplies, are legitimate ones which
the city itself could undertake, in counter-distinction to those which
pander to the lower instincts of the constituency. A mother who eats her
Christmas turkey in a reverent spirit of thankfulness to the alderman
who gave it to her, might be gradually brought to a genuine sense of
appreciation and gratitude to the city which supplies her little
children with a Kindergarten, or, to the Board of Health which properly
placarded a case of scarlet-fever next door and spared her sleepless
nights and wearing anxiety, as well as the money paid with such
difficulty to the doctor and the druggist. The man who in his emotional
gratitude almost kneels before his political friend who gets his boy out
of jail, might be made to see the kindness and good sense of the city
authorities who provided the boy with a playground and reading room,
where he might spend his hours of idleness and restlessness, and through
which his temptations to petty crime might be averted. A man who is
grateful to the alderman who sees that his gambling and racing are not
interfered with, might learn to feel loyal and responsible to the city
which supplied him with a gymnasium and swimming tank where manly and
well-conducted sports are possible. The voter who is eager to serve the
alderman at all times, because the tenure of his job is dependent upon
aldermanic favor, might find great relief and pleasure in working for
the city in which his place was secured by a well-administered civil
service law.
After all, what the corrupt alderman demands from his followers and
largely depends upon is a sense of loyalty, a standing-by the man who is
good to you, who understands you, and who gets you out of trouble. All
the social life of the voter from the time he was a little boy and
played "craps" with his "own push," and not with some other "push," has
been founded on this sense of loyalty and of standing in with his
friends. Now that he is a man, he likes the sense of being inside a
political organization, of being trusted with political gossip, of
belonging to a set of fellows who understand things, and whose interests
are being cared for by a strong friend in the city council itself. All
this is perfectly legitimate, and all in the line of the development of
a strong civic loyalty, if it were merely socialized and enlarged. Such
a voter has already proceeded in the forward direction in so far as he
has lost the sense of isolation, and has abandoned the conviction that
city government does not touch his individual affairs. Even Mill claims
that the social feelings of man, his desire to be at unity with his
fellow-creatures, are the natural basis for morality, and he defines a
man of high moral culture as one who thinks of himself, not as an
isolated individual, but as a part in a social organism.
Upon this foundation it ought not to be difficult to build a structure
of civic virtue. It is only necessary to make it clear to the voter that
his individual needs are common needs, that is, public needs, and that
they can only be legitimately supplied for him when they are supplied
for all. If we believe that the individual struggle for life may widen
into a struggle for the lives of all, surely the demand of an individual
for decency and comfort, for a chance to work and obtain the fulness of
life may be widened until it gradually embraces all the members of the
community, and rises into a sense of the common weal.
In order, however, to give him a sense of conviction that his individual
needs must be merged into the needs of the many, and are only important
as they are thus merged, the appeal cannot be made along the line of
self-interest. The demand should be universalized; in this process it
would also become clarified, and the basis of our political organization
become perforce social and ethical.
Would it be dangerous to conclude that the corrupt politician himself,
because he is democratic in method, is on a more ethical line of social
development than the reformer, who believes that the people must be made
over by "good citizens" and governed by "experts"? The former at least
are engaged in that great moral effort of getting the mass to express
itself, and of adding this mass energy and wisdom to the community as a
whole.
The wide divergence of experience makes it difficult for the good
citizen to understand this point of view, and many things conspire to
make it hard for him to act upon it. He is more or less a victim to that
curious feeling so often possessed by the good man, that the righteous
do not need to be agreeable, that their goodness alone is sufficient,
and that they can leave the arts and wiles of securing popular favor to
the self-seeking. This results in a certain repellent manner, commonly
regarded as the apparel of righteousness, and is further responsible for
the fatal mistake of making the surroundings of "good influences"
singularly unattractive; a mistake which really deserves a reprimand
quite as severe as the equally reprehensible deed of making the
surroundings of "evil influences" so beguiling. Both are akin to that
state of mind which narrows the entrance into a wider morality to the
eye of a needle, and accounts for the fact that new moral movements have
ever and again been inaugurated by those who have found themselves in
revolt against the conventionalized good.
The success of the reforming politician who insists upon mere purity of
administration and upon the control and suppression of the unruly
elements in the community, may be the easy result of a narrowing and
selfish process. For the painful condition of endeavoring to minister
to genuine social needs, through the political machinery, and at the
same time to remodel that machinery so that it shall be adequate to its
new task, is to encounter the inevitable discomfort of a transition into
a new type of democratic relation. The perplexing experiences of the
actual administration, however, have a genuine value of their own. The
economist who treats the individual cases as mere data, and the social
reformer who labors to make such cases impossible, solely because of the
appeal to his reason, may have to share these perplexities before they
feel themselves within the grasp of a principle of growth, working
outward from within; before they can gain the exhilaration and uplift
which comes when the individual sympathy and intelligence is caught into
the forward intuitive movement of the mass. This general movement is not
without its intellectual aspects, but it has to be transferred from the
region of perception to that of emotion before it is really
apprehended. The mass of men seldom move together without an emotional
incentive. The man who chooses to stand aside, avoids much of the
perplexity, but at the same time he loses contact with a great source of
vitality.
Perhaps the last and greatest difficulty in the paths of those who are
attempting to define and attain a social morality, is that which arises
from the fact that they cannot adequately test the value of their
efforts, cannot indeed be sure of their motives until their efforts are
reduced to action and are presented in some workable form of social
conduct or control. For action is indeed the sole medium of expression
for ethics. We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the
sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but
observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment, that
a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with
the question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged
to act upon our theory. A stirring appeal has lately been made by a
recognized ethical lecturer who has declared that "It is insanity to
expect to receive the data of wisdom by looking on. We arrive at moral
knowledge only by tentative and observant practice. We learn how to
apply the new insight by having attempted to apply the old and having
found it to fail."
This necessity of reducing the experiment to action throws out of the
undertaking all timid and irresolute persons, more than that, all those
who shrink before the need of striving forward shoulder to shoulder with
the cruder men, whose sole virtue may be social effort, and even that
not untainted by self-seeking, who are indeed pushing forward social
morality, but who are doing it irrationally and emotionally, and often
at the expense of the well-settled standards of morality.
The power to distinguish between the genuine effort and the adventitious
mistakes is perhaps the most difficult test which comes to our fallible
intelligence. In the range of individual morals, we have learned to
distrust him who would reach spirituality by simply renouncing the
world, or by merely speculating upon its evils. The result, as well as
the process of virtues attained by repression, has become distasteful to
us. When the entire moral energy of an individual goes into the
cultivation of personal integrity, we all know how unlovely the result
may become; the character is upright, of course, but too coated over
with the result of its own endeavor to be attractive. In this effort
toward a higher morality in our social relations, we must demand that
the individual shall be willing to lose the sense of personal
achievement, and shall be content to realize his activity only in
connection with the activity of the many.
The cry of "Back to the people" is always heard at the same time, when
we have the prophet's demand for repentance or the religious cry of
"Back to Christ," as though we would seek refuge with our fellows and
believe in our common experiences as a preparation for a new moral
struggle.
As the acceptance of democracy brings a certain life-giving power, so it
has its own sanctions and comforts. Perhaps the most obvious one is the
curious sense which comes to us from time to time, that we belong to the
whole, that a certain basic well being can never be taken away from us
whatever the turn of fortune. Tolstoy has portrayed the experience in
"Master and Man." The former saves his servant from freezing, by
protecting him with the heat of his body, and his dying hours are filled
with an ineffable sense of healing and well-being. Such experiences, of
which we have all had glimpses, anticipate in our relation to the living
that peace of mind which envelopes us when we meditate upon the great
multitude of the dead. It is akin to the assurance that the dead
understand, because they have entered into the Great Experience, and
therefore must comprehend all lesser ones; that all the
misunderstandings we have in life are due to partial experience, and
all life's fretting comes of our limited intelligence; when the last and
Great Experience comes, it is, perforce, attended by mercy and
forgiveness. Consciously to accept Democracy and its manifold
experiences is to anticipate that peace and freedom.
INDEX[1]
Alderman, basis of his political success, 226, 228, 240, 243, 248, 267;
his influence on morals of the American boy, 251, 255, 256;
on standard of life, 257;
his power, 232, 233, 235, 246, 260;
his social duties, 234, 236, 243, 250.
Art and the workingman, 219, 225.
"Boss," the, ignorant man's dependence on, 260, 266.
Business college, the, 197.
Charity, administration of, 14, 22;
neighborly relations in, 29, 230;
organized, 25;
standards in, 15, 27, 32, 38, 49, 58;
scientific _vs._ human relations in, 64.
Child labor, premature work, 41, 188;
first laws concerning, 167, 170.
City, responsibilities of, 266.
Civil service law, its enforcement, 231, 233.
Commercial and industrial life, social position of, compared, 193.
Commercialism and education, 190-199, 216;
morals captured by, 264;
polytechnic schools taken by, 202.
Coöperation, 153, 158.
Cooper, Peter, 202.
Dayton, Ohio, factory at, 216.
Death and burials among simple people, 238.
Domestic service, problem of, in France, England, and America, 135;
industrial difficulty of, 106;
moral issues of, 106.
Education, attempts at industrial, 201;
commercialism in, 196, 201;
in commercialism, 216;
in technical schools, 201;
lack of adaptation in, 199, 208, 212;
of industrial workers, 180, 193, 199, 219;
offset to overspecialization, 211;
public school and, 190, 192;
relation of, to the child, 180, 185, 193;
relation of, to the immigrant, 181-186;
university extension lectures and settlements, 199;
workingmen's lecture courses, 214.
Educators, mistakes of, 212;
new demands on, 178, 192, 201, 211.
Family claim, the, 4, 74, 78;
daughter's college education, 82;
employer's _vs._ domestic's, 123, 124;
on the daughter, 82;
on the son, _ibid._
Family life, misconception of, 116.
Filial relations, clash of moral codes, 94.
Funerals, attitude of simple people toward, 238.
Household employee, the, 108, 109;
character of, 112;
domestic _vs._ factory, 116, 118, 119, 122;
isolation of, 109, 111, 117, 120, 132;
morals of, 125;
unnatural relation of, 113, 120, 121, 126, 127;
unreasonable demands on, 113, 115;
residence clubs for, 133;
social position of, 114, 119, 122.
Household employer, the, undemocratic ethics of, 116;
reform of, in relation to employee, 126.
Household, the, advantages and disadvantages of factory work over, 129;
competition of factory work with, 128;
difficulties of the small, 135;
industrial isolation of, 117;
industry of, transferred to factory, 104, 105;
lack of progress in, 117;
origin of, 104;
social _vs._ individual aspects of, 103;
suburban difficulties of, 134;
wages in, 131.
Hull-house experiences, 43, 53, 58, 59, 240, 247.
Human life, value of, 7, 178.
Individual action _vs._ associated, 137, 153, 158;
advantages of, 158, 162;
limitations of, 165;
moral evolution involved in, 226.
Individual _vs._ social needs, 155, 269.
Individual _vs._ social virtues, 224, 227, 265.
Italian immigrant, the, conception of abstract virtue among, 229;
dependence of, on their children, 184;
education of, 185;
new conditions of life of, 181.
Juvenile criminal, the, evolution of, 53-56, 187.
Labor, division of, 210, 213;
reaction from, 215.
Law and order, 172, 174, 234.
Moral fact and moral idea, 227, 229, 273.
Morality, natural basis of, 268;
personal and social, 6, 176, 103.
Philanthropic standpoint, the, its dangers, 150, 155-157.
Philanthropist, the, 154, 175-176.
Political corruption, ethical development in, 270;
formation of reform clubs, 246;
greatest pressure of, 260;
individual and social aspect of, 264;
leniency in regard to, 239;
responsibility for, 256, 263;
selling of votes, 244-246;
street railway and saloon interest, 262.
Political leaders, causes of success of, 224.
Political standards, 228, 229, 251-253, 261;
compared with Benjamin Franklin's, 255.
Referendum method, the, 164.
Reformer, the, ethics of, 270.
Reform movements in politics, causes of failure in, 222, 240, 262, 272, 274;
business men's attitude toward, 265.
Rumford, Count, 117.
Ruskin, 219.
Saloon, the, 243, 264.
Social claim, the, 4, 77;
child study and, 92, 180;
misplaced energy and, 90.
Social virtues, code of employer, 143, 148;
code of laboring man, _ibid._
Technical schools, 201;
adaptation of, to workingmen, 204;
compromises in, 203;
polytechnic institutions, 202;
textile schools, 203;
women in, _ibid._
Thrift, individualism of, 31, 40, 212.
Trades unions, 148, 158, 167, 169, 171;
sympathetic strikes, 174.
Workingman, the, ambition of, for his children, 191, 258;
art in relation to, 218;
charity of, 154;
evening classes and social entertainment for, 189;
grievance of, 211;
historical perspective in the work of, _ibid._;
organizations of, 214;
standards for political candidate, 257.
[Footnote 1: This index is not intended to be exhaustive.]
End of Project Gutenberg's Democracy and Social Ethics, by Jane Addams